


Still Waters

by varianwrynn



Series: Togetherverse [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Aftermath of Carteneau, Alternate Universe, Dragons, Garleans (Final Fantasy XIV), M/M, Roegadyn (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 20:54:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17495204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/varianwrynn/pseuds/varianwrynn
Summary: Two days after Carteneau, a XIVth Legion squad pursues the senior surviving officer of the VIIth Legion as he flees across Mor Dhona, attempting to defect.  On the shores of Silvertear Lake, they leave him for dead.(Still waters always did run deep.)





	Still Waters

**Author's Note:**

> Largely unbeta'ed. My first work for FFXIV. One of Midgardsormr's lines ('Fight and struggle, if it be thy will. Man hath ever coveted that which lieth beyond his grasp.') is directly from the MSQ, 'The Rising Chorus,' in the cutscene that follows Keeper of the Lake.
> 
> Warnings: brief, non-graphic descriptions of an execution, drowning, and a dead body.

He has had to abandon his armor along the way: when the ceruleum that powers it ran out, when the earth beneath his boots turned to sheets of crystallized glass upon which they can no longer find traction. Now he’s down to only the black skinsuit he wears beneath it, bare feet leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind him.

They are hunting him, he knows, but he can run no longer, not in this accursed heat, only intensified by the sun reflecting off the ground. Never more has he longed for the cold of home, nestled amongst the glaciers of northern Ilsabard. It has been two days since the Calamity, and already he knows he will never see it again--two days since his cousin’s madness broke the world, leaving him the senior surviving officer, and the one who will pay the price of the Empire’s defeat on the fields of Carteneau when he’s caught.

He doesn’t wholly understand why he continues to flee, prolonging his misery for a few hours more, save that in the distance he’d spotted a relic of Garlemald’s shameful history in Eorzea: the wreck of the _Agrius_ , still entwined with the corpse of the dragon that brought it down. Beneath it lies a lake, and he all but flings himself into it, relishing the feel of the cool water on his face even as it stings and burns in the cuts on his feet. It makes a decent start on washing the caked blood--not his own, thankfully--and dirt and ash from his silver hair, too, and he unbinds it from its braid long enough for a thorough soaking.

Enraptured as he is at the thought of being clean for the first time in days, he doesn’t hear the squad as they come up behind him until they fire. The first bullet hits him in the shoulder as he turns to face them. It takes seven shots from four men before Sammael sas Rabenius falls, and they leave his body in the lake.

His blood stains the once-crystal clear waters a deep crimson as he sinks beneath the surface.

* * *

_**What ripples doth disturb my slumber?** _

_He feels, more than hears, the voice, breaking over him like the endless waves...above? He struggles to drag himself upwards through the water, but the weight of it is too heavy, his limbs too weak._

_**Fight and struggle, if it be thy will. Man hath ever coveted that which lieth beyond his grasp.** _

_Lieth beyond...he is dead, then, or will be soon, and these are but the final ravings of a madman. Odd: he’d always heard tales of a tunnel, an oncoming light, not the brutal press of darkness and a man whose words bear the weight of the earth._

_**Man? Thou thinketh that I am like unto thee, frail and desperate?** _

_Desperate, yes, that’s a good word for it. The light is not advancing but falling away above him as he sinks ever downward._

_**Hah. Even now thou dost desire life. Tell unto me, what price wilt thou pay for thy return?** _

_Price for return? He has nothing to offer, he knows, no pretty trinkets or skills that will be of value to anyone in this strange world._

_**I speaketh of thy heart, mortal. To whom doth it belong?** _

_His mind rushes to his cousin, to the onslaught of violence and terror visited upon so many who were caught so completely unaware--and to a bright and shining light in the distance._

_**Thou desireth to make amends for the misdeeds of thy kin, even as thou coveteth the strength of those whom you seeketh to pay.** _

_He has no answer to that: the words ring true. Where did the Eorzeans find it? Did they not know that Garlemald was without equal? And still they fought, still they believed themselves equal to the iron will of the Emperor, the steel reason of his Legions._

_**This wilt thou discover, mortal, even as thou serveth to bear forth mine promise unto She who aideth them.** _

_She? Promise? The stranger’s words seem to echo within his very soul as his descent slows. A shining blue light appears in front of him, and instinctively he reaches out to grab it: a rock, a crystal, but it seems not to be a solid thing at all, passing through his hand into his chest…_

_He gasps for air._

_**Goest thou unto her with this gift. Say unto Her that I yet await.** _

_A vision fills his eyes, then: fire in the sky, and a falling airship wrapped in the sinuous form of a great dragon._

_Midgardsormr._

_**Thou hath survived the gaze of mine eldest: thou art not without power of thine own. It shalt serve thee well in coming darkness. Thou hast received of my gift. Trouble me no longer.** _

_A bright, searing heat flares across his cheek; air fills his lungs, strength fills his body, and he struggles upwards. It’s all he can do to drag himself onto the shore before the world darkens once more._

* * *

  
Ahtfyr lux Ahldwilfsyn, formerly of the VIIth Imperial Legion of Garlemald, has burned more men alive than he cares to think about. His father Ahldwilf had told him he would, but the pay the Garleans offered was far better than anything he’d ever see in his little fishing village, and so he’d gone as his father had before him, and his father before him, and all the way back since long before the memory of his great-grandfather. ‘You’ll be back,’ Ahldwilf had said.

‘Or you won’t,’ and Ahtfyr is starting to think it might be the latter. Only quick thinking had saved him when the great dragon had burned his squad where they stood, surrounding himself in a block of ice which the beast’s flames had melted. It had bought him time, though--time enough for the thing to overfly him, time to turn and flee. Five days have passed since then, and he’s running low on rations, and what passes for scrub-brush in this sparse land will bear no fruit ample enough to keep him going for long. Thankfully, he’s spotted a lake ahead: a lake means fish, and if there’s anything every Sea Wolf the world over knows, it’s fishing and sailing. A branch will suffice him for a rod, a few strands sliced free of rope carefully unbraided will do for a line, and bait--

He’s still thinking about bait when he spots the body washed up on the shore. The man is face-up and clearly hasn’t been dead long, his face still pink from sunburn. His silver hair and third eye mark him for a Garlean, and his black clothing is riddled with bullet holes: a would-be defector, then, one of the unlucky ones who’d run defenseless into the roaming death squads of van Baelsar’s XIVth Legion, picking off crippled Eorzeans and ‘traitors to the Empire’ alike, and salvaging what they could of the abandoned machinery of war. His eyes are already shut, for which Ahtfyr is grateful, and he says a few words over the man’s body before stooping to drag him free of the water so he won’t poison it as he rots. There’s no time to bury him, and the ground here isn’t soft enough anyways.

Ahtfyr barely has him off the ground when he coughs, a weak and feeble sound. Startled--not dead yet, it seems--he lowers the man back to the ground and turns him over, such that he’ll be better able to expel the water from his lungs. Ahtfyr hopes he has strength enough for that, at least, especially once he sees that the holes in his clothing don’t reveal any wounds: stolen from a dead man, then, only to collapse of the heat or exhaustion, or perhaps some internal injury? The coughing begins anew, only stronger now: a good sign. If he can clear it, he may yet stand a chance, Ahtfyr thinks as he supports the Garlean’s body over his lap and holds his hair back.

By the end of it, he’s coughing up blood along with the lake water, and the Roegadyn has no idea what to think of that. He looks up at Ahtfyr, though, through pale silver eyes that stand out against the flush of his cheeks, smiling at him briefly before slipping again into unconsciousness. He’s still breathing, at least, and Ahtfyr drags him into the shade of some rocks to rest.

He’ll be fishing for two, it seems.

**Author's Note:**

> (In the same fleeting moment, thou must live, die and know.)


End file.
